


Apple Market

by AmandaRex



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:54:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmandaRex/pseuds/AmandaRex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trip to Covent Garden takes a wrong turn, changing the Doctor's perspective a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apple Market

After a particularly strange and dangerous trip to a planet he'd never really considered a particularly strange or dangerous place had left them both on edge, the Doctor desperately needed a break in the tension. Yes, they'd nearly put him to death, but Rose reacted as though he hadn't had the entire situation well in hand.  
  
"Fantax IV," he said, making yet another suggestion. "You'll love it. Purple skies, peaceful." She pulled a face and he began to wonder if she'd lost the desire to travel at all. He'd proposed a hundred places they could go to relax, but she'd dismissed each one, a mysterious smile on her face.  
  
"All right then, where do you want to go? Clearly I'll never guess it." He smirked a bit when her face brightened. Apparently she felt that she'd bested him, and truth be told, it was most probably true.  
  
"London." She looked mischievous, her eyes dancing.  
  
"Oh, if it's Jackie you'd like to see, I'll take you. I'll...er, just stay here while you visit. The TARDIS is due for a bit of tinkering."  
  
"Nope, mum doesn't even need to know we're there, and you're coming with me. There's something I want to show you. So...London. Covent Garden. A Sunday morning." She raised her eyebrow at him. "A Sunday morning in this century. My decade, if you please."  
  
"In London?" His voice broke upward in that way he couldn't quite keep it from doing since his regeneration. Bit annoying, really. "Covent Garden? We can go anywhere, any time, and you want to go to the bleeding West End?"  
  
"S'worth it, I promise. You could do with a new tie."  
  
He scoffed. "This is a classic look, this is." He brandished his tie in one hand as she smirked at it. "Or does it make me far too attractive? Is that it? Plan to get me a plainer one?"  
  
"You'll like the market, Doctor," she said, scoffing at bit at his egotistical joke. "Don't think even you could find a disaster there."  
  
"Oh, that's very nice." He pouted, even as he began to pull levers and twist dials. If she wanted Covent Garden, he was going to take her to the most Coventy of Covent Garden Sunday mornings she could possibly imagine.  
  

* * *

  
   
Seeing her like this, watching her from a distance, he was glad she'd suggested it.  
  
She called out to him from across Apple Market, holding up the most gloriously garish red tie he'd ever laid eyes on. And that was saying something, he realized, considering the taste in clothing some of his previous regenerations had.  
  
He shook his head vigorously, laughing heartily when she completely ignored him and began to bargain with the keeper of the booth, shaking the red tie at him as she did. He didn't envy that man, being on the receiving end of Rose's haggling skills.  
  
"Help you with something, sir?"  
  
The voice cut through his thoughts of Rose and he looked up to find an older woman smiling warmly at him.  
  
"No, don't think so. Lovely day, though, isn't it?" He smiled back.  
  
"It is that, but I'll thank you to unhand the merchandise all the same." Her words were tough, but the sparkle in her eyes made them seem lighthearted.  
  
For a moment, he was confused. Then he looked down at his hands and found he was holding a book from her table.  
  
"Ah." He wondered at the book as he turned it over and looked at it. He had no idea when he'd picked it up or why he would have done something like that so absent-mindedly. And a children's book, at that.  
  
 _You were staring at Rose,_ his brain helpfully supplied. _Besotted, misguided fool that you are._  
  
"That's a nice one, that one. Do you have a wee one to read it to?"  
  
"Me? No." _Except for the child that shares the TARDIS with you. The one you should keep your bloody hands away from._  
  
"Oh, good looking bloke like yourself? Shame not to pass on that hair and those looks." She grinned cheekily at him. "You should buy it as a good luck charm."  
  
You should buy it as a reminder that the woman you nurse this attraction for should seem little more than a child to you, he thought.  
  
The book did remind him of Rose, he found, when he saw the title. Peach and Blue, it read, and his eyes found her across the market again. Her blond hair was piled on her head, exposing too much of the peachy, smooth skin of her neck. Contrasting against that, the rough, battered blue of her denim jacket.  
  
"Peach and Blue," he whispered.  
  
He shut his eyes, forcibly replacing his thoughts of her with the others whizzing about in his head, just under the surface. The heartbeats of the people surrounding him, the feel of the ground shaking under his feet as they milled past him, the tiny changes in the temperature of the air as the morning progressed.  
  
When he was satisfied that he'd pulled himself together again, he moved to replace the book on the table among the other battered, used books when she interrupted him. "Jus' a pound, then. Surely you can spare a pound for something that's caught your eye."  
  
He smiled, loving that tenacious, yet good-natured way that humans had of talking him into things he'd rather not do. He pulled a rumpled pound note out of the breast pocket of his pinstriped, brown jacket and gave it to the woman, who stuffed it into her shirt in a way that was probably best not dwelt upon.  
  
"Thanks." He tucked the book under his arm and turned away to look for Rose. He felt sure he would find her trying to negotiate another impossible bargain. Perhaps a car in exchange for a tenner and an extremely ugly red tie.  
  
He walked, looking down each row, walking faster and faster when he failed to catch a glimpse of her. He broke into a slow jog when it occurred to him that she probably wouldn't have covered so much ground on her own, at least not without telling him. The jog turned into a full run when he heard her scream.  
  
When he found her, she was slumped over, leaning partway against the wall of a dank alleyway, with two greasy-looking men hovering over her.  
  
"Move away from that girl," he warned, his voice hard.  
  
One of them turned to face him, brandishing a knife. The Doctor's stomach twisted when he saw red coating the blade. Red. Rose's blood. The thug laughed at him, advancing toward the Doctor.  
  
"Leave...this...place." The words came slowly, overflowing with the malice he held within him. He held the sonic screwdriver aloft, wielding it yet again as a weapon instead of the tool it was meant to be. "Rest assured, if you've harmed this girl, I will find you, and you will make you wish you hadn't. Now leave."  
  
"He don't get it, do he, mate?" the larger of the two asked his friend. "We'll have your wallet, and we'll do what we like with the girl. Not much a pansy arse like you's goin' to do 'bout it, is there?"  
  
"You are two very lucky simpletons, indeed." The Doctor's every nerve seethed with rage. "I'm much more concerned with her condition than with making you pay."  
  
They laughed for a moment until the Doctor thumbed a dial on the sonic screwdriver, quickly using it on each of the men as they advanced on him. They fell to the ground, motionless, and the Doctor didn't honestly care if anyone found them in time to revive them or not.  
  
He scooped Rose into his arms, sickened at the sight of blood coating her denim jacket, surrounding a jagged rip. He had to get her to the medical bay in the TARDIS. He could help her, but he had to hurry.  
   
 

* * *

  
To his relief, the wound proved to be mostly superficial and relatively easy to heal. It had distressed him at first that no amount of painkillers had seemed to calm her and he'd considered the possibility that he'd missed something. She fought his every move as though she thought she was still fighting for her life back in that alley, but he felt it was more because she was in shock than actually in a great deal of physical pain.  
  
Once she'd fallen into a quiet sleep, he watched the monitors, unable to look at her pale face and limp body. As many times as he tried to tell himself she would be fine, that she needed the rest more because of the mental trauma than the physical, he could only believe it when he watched the cold, hard facts playing out in numbers and lines and lights.  
  
He collapsed onto a stool, swiveling away from her. The book he'd purchased sat before him where he'd carelessly thrown it onto a control panel in his haste, a smear of red coloring the cover. He ran his fingers over the blood, his breath catching at the very idea that he'd come so close to losing her in such a mundane, violent way. If he hadn't found her when he had, they might have done more damage than a rip in her favorite jacket and a small scar on her abdomen.  
  
He opened the book, sliding the stool closer to her bed, and began to read to her. He wasn't even sure why he thought to do it, but he found some solace in the sound of the words. Then, somewhere along the way, he realized he wasn't reading the book for Rose. He was reading it for himself. When he realized what this simple story was about, he understood why his hands had found it among all the others on the old woman's table.  
  
His voice broke a little as he reached the last page, rasping his way through the words.  
  
"'You can stay here forever, if you like,' said Blue. 'I'd like you to.'"  
  
He looked at Rose, seeing that some color had returned to her cheeks as she slept on. He felt ridiculous, nine hundred years old as he was, about to cry over her sickbed when he knew she would be fine. His eyes fell back to the page, and he continued.  
  
"'I don't think I'll last forever,' said Peach," and the Doctor's voice broke a little when the reality of how fragile and fleeting Rose's life was sunk into him though every pore, weighing him down with the darkness of it.  
  
That was the pain he carried now, he realized, and not without a great deal of guilt. Losing Gallifrey, having to make the impossible decision that left him the final Time Lord—that still hurt him. The lasting effect of that was much more personal, however. He thought he had known loss before, but the war had taught him to fear it.  
  
"'That's okay,' said Blue," he read. "'Not many folks do. But until then, you have me, and I have you.'"  
  
He let his forehead fall forward onto her, carefully positioning it as far away as he could from the area where the wound had been. She would have a small, silvery scar there, he'd wager. Surrounded by this technology, things that might never even be dreamed of on her planet, and he still couldn't spare her the scar. Bloody humans and those fragile bodies they wandered about in. Covered in little more than tissue paper, precious little organ redundancy. A million ways to sustain a life-ending injury, and a microscopic life span even if they did manage to die of 'old age'.  
  
Then her hand was in his hair, comforting him, albeit a bit shakily and hesitantly. It still felt like a miracle to him.  
  
"Wha' are you on about?" Her words were slurred, and he pulled away from her hand to look at her. She smiled at him, a tired, but hopeful smile. "I'm tryin' to sleep, and you're making this racket."  
  
"Sorry. Just a daft book I bought at that market of yours."  
  
She winced and every one of his senses lit up, the ones she knew about and the ones she didn't, alike. He knew, as certain as if it had happened to him, that memories of the alleyway had just come flooding back to her.  
  
"The men." She tried to sit up, but he'd seen it coming and he gently eased her back.  
  
"They're sorted." He looked at her, warning her with his eyes not to ask any more questions about them. She didn't want to know that he may well have left them for dead back there, and he didn't want to tell her that. "And you'll be fine after a few more hours of sleep. Right as rain."  
  
"They must have seen that roll of notes in my front pocket. So much money on my bedside table when I woke up this morning...I just stuffed it into my jeans pocket before we left."  
  
"The TARDIS. She knew where we were headed." He brushed Rose's hair with the back of his hand. "She must like you a great deal. She wouldn't replicate something like that for someone she wasn't fond of."  
  
"Should have bought her something," Rose said tiredly, and the TARDIS answered her with a welcoming hum the Doctor knew she couldn't possibly hear.  
  
"I think she'll understand, given the circumstances."  
  
"They grabbed me." He wished he could keep her from reliving it, but her eyes told him she was unable to hold back any longer. "I tried to pull away, but I felt that knife. I wanted to call out for you, but I was too shocked at first." She laughed a bit. "S'pose I just couldn't believe that I would escape Daleks, the Jagrafess, the Gelth, Slitheen, and I don't know how many others, and I'd die there, in bloody Covent Garden."  
  
"You didn't." The Doctor said it more for himself than for her. "And you won't."  
  
"I know." He recognized that tone of voice. It was laced with that arrogance that only existed in the hearts of young, headstrong women from this one particular planet.  
  
He loved her for that. He loved her for everything. In this quiet moment, surrounded by these stark, white walls, he couldn't remember why he'd ever held back from her. Long years of control, his need to protect himself from the pain of having her and losing her all too soon...it all disappeared.  
  
"What?" To his amazement, she sat up and looked at him as though none of the events of the past few hours had ever taken place. "Why are you looking at me like that?"  
  
He pulled himself back to reality, the one in which he didn't take advantage of people who seemed to trust him so guilelessly, without reservation.  
  
"Humans never cease to amaze me, Rose Tyler." He tried to sound flip and noncommittal. "Bleeding all over me one minute, fine the next."  
  
"I know that look. You're thinking of chucking me out."  
  
"No." He met her eyes and made sure he convinced her. She looked so hurt. For the first time in his life, he didn't know if he could hide what was truly going on inside him with a flip remark and another trip in the TARDIS. He froze, speechless, a rarity for him since his regeneration.  
  
"I've never seen you like this." She looked equal measures worried and intrigued.  
  
"I'm not sure what to say." He could feel that age-old need of his to flee, to move, to explore, anything but face the reality of his own here and now. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but he wasn't sure he could do it. That he should do it.  
  
"Are you all right?" She reached up and ran her hand through his hair again, this time with that gentle concern of hers. He could live another nine hundred years and he'd still think of her whenever he saw kindness given so freely, as she did.  
  
"I almost lost you." He was suddenly unable to look at her. "Again."  
  
"S'what we do, you an' me." Her voice had a matter-of-fact tone that made him shiver. It scared him, how flip she could be with her life. He'd seen things and been places and if something happened to him, he'd had a good, long life. Her life had barely begun, she'd barely tasted it, and it frightened him how she could easily match his own pragmatism. "I'd have been dead long ago, weren't for you," she reminded him. "Blown to bits in the bloody shop if you weren't there to tell me to run for it."  
  
He knew she was trying to reassure him, but she was only making him angry. Not at her, but at a universe that seemed to have it in for her at every turn. As no one, not even a Time Lord, can argue with the universe, arguing with Rose would have to do.  
  
"So you're on borrowed time, is that it? Is that why you can be so casual? Because you shouldn't be here, so why not take a chance or two?"  
  
"I didn't ask those men to attack me today." She rose easily to the task, the first blush of anger gracing her cheeks. "I don't look for trouble, Doctor."  
  
"Oh no?" He heard his voice rising higher and he hated himself for berating her like this. "You don't look for trouble, do you? What about the Daleks?"  
  
"The Daleks? Why were they any different? I might've found a way back to Satellite Five against your wishes, but it's not as though I made any difference. You found a way to fix it in the end, just as you always do. In case you haven't noticed, you were the one who was injured in that, not me. You've saved me so many times and I couldn't save you." She began to cry, hanging her head tiredly and weeping tears of exhaustion and guilt she didn't deserve.  
  
He was stunned into silence again, realizing for the first time how very little of her experience with the heart of the TARDIS she actually remembered. She had saved him. Saved him and every other worthless creature in the universe, nearly sacrificing herself in the process.  
  
"Don't cry." He was more out of his element here than on any foreign planet. "Rose, whatever you think you remember of Satellite Five, it's time you knew the truth."  
  
"What truth? I brought the TARDIS back, but I must have been knocked out during the journey. Next thing I remember, you'd done something, everyone was safe, and you were so badly injured that you had to regenerate. Isn't that right?"  
  
"Dead on. Except for just a bit. Well, a bit more than that. More like the entire bit." He had to make a joke out of it. He told himself it was for her, but he knew it was actually for himself.  
  
"What—"  
  
"It was you, Rose. You opened the TARDIS, looked inside, and drew it in. You held that power inside you and used it to save us all. You waved your hand and the Daleks turned to dust. My plan would have destroyed everyone on Satellite Five. But you, clever girl, you worked out a way to be a bit more subtle than me." He took her cheek into his hand, wiping some of her tears away with his thumb.  
  
Her eyes were so open, so trusting. It was all he could do not to cry as well, knowing what she'd nearly done to herself, just to save him. He'd tried to tell himself she'd done it for everything and anything but him, but there in her eyes was the truth. She'd done it to save him, her Doctor. And he'd never properly thanked her.  
  
"But then, how did you end up—"  
  
"I took it from you. The heart of the TARDIS. I absorbed it. Thought I might be able to withstand it, but this old girl was more than I could take," He looked at the walls of his beautiful, battered old ship. "It was tearing me apart. Regeneration was the only way. Didn't know how much you'd remember of it after you woke."  
  
"I—none of it. You told me...you told me you sang a song and the Daleks ran away. Sounded like a fairy tale."  
  
"You're the fairy tale, Rose. You were the knight in shining armor, the prince with the kiss that broke the spell. And you nearly killed yourself in the process. If I hadn't drawn it out of you when I did..." He trailed off, finding himself incapable of putting the rest of that thought into words.  
  
"How? How did you do it?"  
  
"Like this." He dipped his head toward her. Her eyes closed, but he kept watching her. Her breath fluttered against his lips for a moment before they touched, feather-light. For a moment, it felt exactly the same as their last kiss, just as though the full, golden power of the TARDIS was passing between them again. When he pulled away, he found himself just as breathless as she looked.  
  
"Rose, I shouldn't have...I'm sorry."  
  
"Kiss me again."  
  
"Rose, I don't do—"  
  
"—domestic?" She laughed openly at him, and he wasn't sure if he should be offended or join in. "You've just done it, Doctor. Really well." She brushed his lips with her fingertips. "Now do it again."  
  
"I—" He wanted so badly to just give in and drown himself in her. "—can't. We're not equals, Rose." He had to find the words to make her understand.  
  
The hurt look on her face hid nothing, but then, she rarely hid anything from him.  
  
"I know we're not, Doctor. I thought, the way you treat me, I might be a little more than that to you. Or am I just a funny little trained animal to keep around?"  
  
He cupped her other cheek, feeling the softness of her skin against both of his palms. He tried, and failed, to keep himself from letting his thumb play over the apple of her cheek. He tilted her head upward, wanting to be sure she fully understood him.  
  
"Rose, I'm not _your_ equal. I've done things you'd have hated me for if you'd seen me do them. I've put you in danger. I've _knowingly_ put you in danger. You—you're so far above me that I can't even see you clearly. I keep letting myself believe that I could resist you, that I could keep myself from touching you, that I could let you go when the time comes and you want to get on with your life. But if I kiss you even one more time, Rose Tyler, I won't. I won't be able to do any of that, and you'll pay the price, Rose. Not me. You."  
  
"Do I have to pull apart your ship to save you from yourself again, Doctor? Because I'll do it. Maybe your next regeneration will have a bit of sense."  
  
"Rose, you're injured. You're not thinking clearly."  
  
"I feel fine. I have a great doctor." And, bless her, she took matters into her own hands and saved him again. She reached up and pulled him to her, her lips moving in ways that made him want to fire up the TARDIS and either thank or kill the bloke who taught her to kiss this way.  
  
Her lips, good lord, did she really have just two of them? It seemed as though she had many more than that. Her tongue, bloody hell, was that really her tongue? She was only nineteen, perhaps twenty (it was hard to reckon the passage of linear time in the TARDIS, after all). How had she had time to learn how to pull his lower lip into her mouth and do—  
  
He pulled away, breathing hard and looking down at his shoes like a bloody schoolboy. She was too much. Too much of everything he'd ever pushed away, the things he'd denied himself in return for the life he chose to lead.  
  
"Better than your Madame de Pompadour, then, hmm?"  
  
"Who?" She rewarded him with a laugh and a cheeky kiss on the tip of his nose.  
  
"S'not too comfortable here, is it? Help me back to my room?"  
  
Ah, that he could do. Help her down the corridor, tuck her in, see to it she got a nice, long sleep. She'd been through a lot, and could clearly use a bit of a rest.  
  
"Right." He started to slide his arms around her, one under her knees and the other supporting her back, but she pulled away.  
  
"I'm fine to walk. Just help me down?"  
  
He bit back the urge to argue with her, the image of her bleeding beneath his hands far too fresh in his mind. He helped her slide to the edge of the bed, breathing in deep and shutting his eyes when she twined her arms around his neck. With an energy he wouldn't have thought her capable of, she pressed herself against him and slid down his body until her feet were flat on the ground. He held her tightly to his chest, nearly collapsing to his knees when her mouth brushed his neck.  
  
"Rose." His voice squeaked when he spoke. "If you keep doing that, I—"  
  
"You'll what?" She was clearly taunting him, halting her progress down his neck only long enough to utter a few more words. "D'you think I can't handle you?"  
  
He took her chin into his hands again, bringing her mouth to his and letting his pleasure at her surprised gasp thrum through his body. Tiny receptors in his fingertips picked up the rise in her body temperature, the quickening of her pulse. She felt limp, liquid against him, as though they could mold together and no one would succeed in separating them again. He could nearly let himself believe it, even if only for a moment.  
  
She pushed him backward and they stumbled a bit before finding their footing together. With some difficulty they got through the doorway, twirling around each other as they made their way down the corridor. He tried to keep them upright but found his energies were better spent trying to decide which part of her tasted the most decadent. He was intoxicated by her mouth until he sampled the hollow of her throat and found himself enamored anew. The patch of skin just behind her earlobe should be outlawed, he thought, given the power that it clearly had to bring men to their knees.  
  
Her hands pulled at his clothes and his ran over territory long admired from afar. Even now, he still had doubts, but they were fading fast. He trusted the TARDIS, knowing she would never help them find Rose's bedroom if she decided to withhold her blessing, and he was content to let her word be his final decision. His Rose and his TARDIS had saved him just a few months before. Perhaps this was their way of saving him again.  
  
He found a doorknob under his hand as he pawed blindly behind Rose's back. She stumbled backward when it gave way but he caught her, pulling her close again.  
  
He could spend a century trying to decide exactly what the natural scent of her body reminded him of. Broken images of beautiful planets, some of them long dead, flashed through his mind. He'd experienced the most amazing, exotic scents the universe had to offer, but what he could sense from her now made each of them pale in comparison. He could let a decade pass exploring her mouth, and if the feel of her clothing-covered body under his hands was any indication, many more years could pass while he learned every last detail of it.  
  
She ran her hands up his chest and under his overcoat, easing it down his arms and then to the floor. She'd tugged at his tie earlier but it was still hanging loosely around his neck, half-untucked from his collar. She hooked a finger into the center of the knot, slowly pulling at it until the end pulled free. She left it there, choosing to attack the buttons down the front of his shirt first.  
  
She undid them slowly, her eyes never leaving his. As each of the buttons popped open under her fingers, she pulled his shirt apart and pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss over the newly exposed skin. She had no way of knowing how directly that contact affected the hearts that beat just under her mouth, starting a complex series of chemical reactions within him that intensified with each gentle touch of her lips. When her mouth wandered to the left to cover his nipple, he nearly blacked out from the effect it had on him.  
  
"Bed." He hoped she wouldn't hear the raw desperation in his voice.  
  
Her eyes darkened, her pupils dilating as she walked slowly backward, stopping only when the backs of her legs were flush with the bed. She sat and he knelt in front of her, groaning when she caught the end of his tie between two fingertips, pulling it slowly away from his neck. She discarded it behind her onto the bed, then made quick work of his jacket and shirt.  
  
He eased her back, the feel of her hands on his bare chest soon becoming too much for him to bear and he was now consumed with a desire to discover her in the same way. Her denim jacket was rough against his skin and he helped her out of it, nuzzling the inside of her elbow until she took his head in her hands and pulled him back to her mouth.  
  
Her hands roamed again, brushing down his chest, then up again to rest on his shoulders. Kiss after kiss drew him in as she pulled him over her.  
  
"I'm too heavy. You're injured."  
  
"S'okay. I'm fine. You feel good." She captured his earlobe and pulled it into her mouth, making his thoughts even less distinct than they'd already become.  
  
He felt like he needed to tell her something, but he was unable to fully remember what he wanted to say. All he could think about was how her body was so supple beneath his, accommodating him as though she'd been built with him in mind.  
  
Through a feat of concentration he wouldn't have imagined himself capable of, he remembered what he needed to say. In his last few moments of coherent thought, he struggled to explain a bit of Time Lord physiology to her that he'd never considered necessary information for her to have.  
  
"Rose, Gallifreyans—" He stopped abruptly when she arched upward, pushing herself strongly, insistently, against him. "Give me a moment," he begged. "I have to tell you something."  
  
"You talk too much." She pulled him closer and forced him to shut his eyes at the sheer perfection of it.  
  
"I have to—you need to understand...Gallifreyan males, we react to this in a way you might not expect. I don't want to frighten you."  
  
A moment of uncertainty flickered over her features and she stopped moving, looking up into his eyes in the darkness.  
  
"I react differently than the men you may be used to. In a moment, I'll be able to understand you, but I may not be able to speak. If I do something that frightens you or makes you uncomfortable, just tell me and I'll stop. I might have no reaction to some things that would push a human male over the edge, and I might nearly lose consciousness at something you'd consider incidental. There's no way around it, Rose. I'm an alien to you, and you need to be prepared for that."  
  
She regarded him carefully, hesitantly. He tried to read her, even dipping into a vague sense of her thoughts that he'd never have used if their bodies weren't meshed together, about to share the most intimate act the universe had to offer them. It was the momentary, downward flick of her eyes that gave her away, in the end.  
  
"Ah." A bit of humor permeated the haze of his increasingly unformed, diaphanous thoughts. "We're compatible." He hoped that was enough to put any of her fears to rest. "The effect you have on me, however, may be rather more strong than you're used to." At the feel of her body against his, every word was already little more than a breathless gasp. "I have senses I've never told you about, and you will overwhelm nearly each and every one of them. You already are. It's all I can do to put a sentence together."  
  
Her eyes widened in shock, then a wicked smile spread over her lips. "We'll just have to do something about that, then."  
  
Her fingers found the button and zipper at the front of his trousers, loosening them and then easing them down his hips. A flash of surprise accompanied her discovery that he wore nothing beneath them. Then her eyes darkened further, nearly to the point of blackness, at the moment she found him to be completely indistinguishable from a human male. She rolled him to his back, skimming her hair over him as she moved slowly down his body, taking the rest of his clothes with her. His shoes hit the ground with two soft thuds before she returned to him, the cottony feel of her jeans and t-shirt against his skin a mere suggestion of the softness beneath.  
  
"Your skin's warmer." He could do nothing but nod silently. "It's nice."  
  
"It's you," he rasped. "Everything is you."  
  
He wanted to continue, to try to tell her how she made him feel at just the touch of her hand or the feel of her lips against his skin, but she kissed him again and made it impossible. Her mouth parted against his, urging him to do the same, and then her tongue explored his mouth. Just as she was in everything else, she was headstong, impulsive. Nipping at him one moment, then gently caressing the curve of his lower lip the next.  
  
When she pulled away he thought there would perhaps be a momentary respite, a chance to regain a bit of the ground he'd lost. She deserved more than him lying under her, bewitched by her every move, but doing nothing to deserve what she'd offered him.  
  
He was terribly wrong, of course. She'd pulled back, straightening up only long enough to cross her arms over her torso and grab the bottom hem of her t-shirt. She lingered for a moment, long enough for him to wonder if she was teasing or if she was actually hesitant, but then she gave him a gentle smile and tugged upward at the fabric.  
  
Her skin, milky-white and soft, seemed to glow softly in the dim light of her room. He winced as he caught a glimpse of her wound, but he soon forgot it as he drank the sight of her in. Her breasts surpassed every fantasy of her he'd ever entertained. Their gentle weight gave her curves where the rest of her torso was subtly toned. They fit her, they seemed quintessentially her, in a way he'd never be able to put words to, though he'd love to spend the rest of his life trying to do just that. Her dusky pink nipples, hardened against the rest of her softness, spoke of just how much she needed him. He was floored at the sudden realization that this beautiful, innocent creature had seen him, really learned him, and yet she still wanted him.  
  
Her hands slid over her own skin, brushing her breasts and even a bit over her injured abdomen as they traveled, until they found the button at the waistband of her jeans. A quick, nimble movement of index finger and thumb released it, but before she could continue, he stayed her hands with his own.  
  
"Let me." He wondered how he could possibly have gained enough control of himself to accomplish this, given the dumbfounding beauty before him. His fingers took over where hers had left off, tugging down the zip and loosening the jeans. A dark red scrap of lace was visible beneath, sheer and revealing more than it concealed.  
  
They rolled to their sides, facing each other with their faces close, each pair of eyes boring into the other. She shifted to make their job easier as they worked together to bare the rest of her body to him, the remains of her clothes discarded and forgotten as soon as she was freed.  
  
They kissed, making each one somehow different and more intense than the last until she pulled away, trailing her lips down his chin to his chest. She pushed gently against his shoulder until he rolled to his back, letting her hair play over his chest again as she licked, nipped and kissed the flat of his stomach. He could feel her warm breath moving lower and lower and he reveled in her total abandon.  
  
She moved even lower until she was even with the object of her earlier curiosity. It confused him for a moment until he recalled a bit of Earth culture trivia he once thought he'd never use.  
  
"Rose." He gently tugged on her shoulders and pulled her back up to look at her. "I...you needn't do that."  
  
"I don't mind." She broke his heart a little when he saw the hurt look playing over her features.  
  
"That's not it. Anywhere you touch me is brilliant, Rose, but I'm different than you're used to. What you were about to do, it's no different to me than feeling your mouth anywhere else. But it will..." He struggled for words, feeling as he did, as though he was losing his footing on his sanity. "It could end things rather faster than you'd like." He gave her a long, lingering kiss now that her lips were even with his again.  
  
She laughed a bit against him and he pulled back, seeing the mirth dancing in her eyes. "You're no different than a human male then, Doctor."  
  
"I wouldn't enjoy it as much as they do, but it would have the same side effect."  
  
"So you really don't like it when—"  
  
"That's not it. It's just not as good as...other things."  
  
Her eyes flashed, widening, then narrowing to regard him more closely. "Show me."  
  
They stayed that way for a long time, looking at each other, her hand lightly brushing his hair away from his temple. He tried, though his haze, to weigh her request. He might have been able to do this and still let her go when the time came if it had just been him going into her world, giving her the things she needed and wanted from him. If he brought her in, showing her how to give herself to him in ways that description defied even the Time Lords, he knew there was no way he'd ever truly be able to give her up.  
  
Wordlessly, he took her hands, pulling her arms around him. He did the same, bringing their bodies into full contact, lying on their sides.  
  
"Do what I do," he whispered against her hair, nuzzling his forehead against her neck. He skimmed his open palms over her back, feather-light, trying to gain a sense of the energies fluxing through her body. She did the same, somehow finding the two precise spots on his back that sent energy charging through him. He jerked against her reflexively and he felt her stiffen, misunderstanding his reaction. After denying himself this for so long and not really believing her uniquely human senses would guide her as perfectly as they had, he'd been unprepared for the strength of his own response.  
  
"No, you're fine. It's perfect."  
  
"Am I doing this wrong?" Her voice was small, hesitant.  
  
"No, no, not wrong. Just too right." He continued to brush his palms against her back, wondering if her physiology would allow him to give her what she'd given him. She relaxed again and moved her hands back to their earlier position, the hum of energy flowing through him again.  
  
She began to whimper, breathy, beautiful noises that intensified each wave that passed through him. He reached out, a weak psychic link, and she received him. She welcomed him inside her, the blinding light of her essence, the generosity and gentleness that ran deep within her lighting them and pushing away his darkness. Emotions, so bright and simple he'd forgotten they could exist with such purity, filled him. He'd never felt such hope, such love, unjaded by the hardness he'd long since adopted as his first defense.  
  
Any lack of union between the two of them became unthinkable—obscene. They shifted, each motion in perfect concert, and their bodies joined and made their connection complete. His body, his mind, was inside her, and she was all around him, a safe harbor, the peace he hadn't even known he'd been searching for.  
  
He rocked against her, her body accepting him, moving with him. One regret crystallized itself in his mind when he realized her eyes were tightly shut. He'd anticipated that she might need this one last privacy, some way to keep a sense of her own identity and not be engulfed by him. Just as he swallowed his tiny bit of disappointment at the one barrier she appeared to need, her eyes flew open, locking on his as he moved within her.  
  
Flashes of emotions that weren't his raged through his mind and he brought their foreheads together, knowing she was experiencing the same thing and instinctively feeling she would need his support.  
  
"Doctor," she repeated, over and over, and he answered with her name each time. The song of the TARDIS began to play in their minds and he didn't know if it came from him or from her, as they both knew it. Golden light came down around them and the song grew louder, an impossible pressure building within him. He was certain that he would break, shatter under the burden, and he fought as though both of their lives depended on it.  
  
"Please," she begged, and her voice did shatter him. He shuddered in her arms and he felt those tremors run through her as well. In the final moment, his universe went blessedly still. The constant noise of his existence, the awareness of what is and what was and what could be, it all fell away and gave him rest.  
  
He collapsed gratefully against her chest and her arms wound around his head, cradling him to her protectively. His Rose, the only one who had ever been able to reach him in this way.  
  
He longed to tell her everything, how he loved her and how she'd saved him every day since he'd met her, but he found himself fighting against an uncommon fatigue. He wondered if she already knew what he wanted to say, if she'd already read this from him while the link had remained open.  
  
Just as he drew breath to make his confession, he felt the gentle rise and fall of her chest beneath his cheek. It was the even breathing of a deep, untroubled slumber, and he was just enough of a coward to refuse to wake her from it.  
  
He would tell her he loved her when she could hear it and accept him, once they'd traveled and adventured and set the universe right.  
  
Someday.

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by dynapink. This was originally written for the Rose Tyler Ficathon on Livejournal, written for lj user lyricalviolet. She supplied the following guidelines for the fic:
> 
> 1\. Romance/smut  
> 2\. A discussion of the Bad Wolf  
> 3\. Quote: "I don't think it'll last forever. That's okay. Not many folks do. But until then, you have me, and I have you." (from Peach and Blue, Sarah S. Kilborne 1994)
> 
> and no Jackie/Pete Tyler.


End file.
